Nano-biotechnology (NBT) as the next generation fusion technology is a technology which can bring innovative advance to diagnosis and treatment of human disease, and its importance is growing.
Particularly, a biochip as one of representative areas of biotechnology is a biological information sensing device wherein biological materials such as DNA, protein, antibody, cell and the like are integrated in large scale on a solid substrate such as glass, silicone, polymer and the like, and it is a suitable technology to analyze trace amount of a sample very rapidly.
According to the development of cell technology, methodology which can effectively analyze only unit cell was demanded as cell study is further subdivided, and micro-engineering accelerated the study of the biochip by providing the methodology.
The biochip can be largely classified to a microarray chip and a microfluidic chip. The microarray chip is a chip wherein tens of millions or tens thousands of DNA, protein, carbohydrate, peptide and the like are arranged at certain interval, and a material subjected to analysis is treated thereto to analyze their binding pattern, and the microfluidic chip (or lab on a chip) is a chip to analyze pattern of reaction of the subjecting material to analysis with various biological molecules integrated on the chip or sensor while flowing out the subjecting material.
In the microfluidic chip, as a cell separation technique using a dielectrophoresis to separate single cell, there is a method using a negative/positive dielectrophoresis or a traveling wave dielectrophoresis alone, or using a dielectrophoresis migration or a dielectrophoresis retention, which combines the dielectrophoresis and the microfluidics. The dielectrophoresis migration or the dielectrophoresis retention has disadvantages that dielectric properties between cells should be largely different, and stress is added to the cells during separation.
Some ways were suggested to solve the problems, but a way to exclude external stress occurred in the process of single cell trap has not yet been suggested so far. The way to trap single cells without external stress is still remained as a problem to be solved not only for detailed single cell study, but also for the development of biotechnology.